Yesterday on my way to pub trivia I almost got struck by lightning. Meaning I was walking down the street, and I saw a white flash and heard a crack, and wasn't sure for a second whether I had been struck by lightning. Bzzt.
It's insanely hot and humid here.
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The new pad is now tricked out with wireless internet. And wireless printing. And wireless playing of music from the iTunes. I'm getting microwaved as we speak. Yes, but there is air conditioning.
I also enjoy the cooking with gas, the 20 minutes of direct sunlight at 11:00 am, living near every subway line, and free exercize in the form of four flights of walk-up.
Retroactive posssssts.....
As do people who will spontaneously invite you to go at noon on a Sunday, and a train that takes you to an elevator that takes you several stories to a citadel so far north up the Hudson that there are thickly treed banks on the Jersey side and sailboats in the water - though still tenement apartment buildings below 
you on the Manhattan side. The Cloisters is a branch of the Met, constructed out of chunks of mediaeval abbeys and churches from Western Europe. It's quiet and it smells good.
Once a year at Coney Island. I was too busy sitting on a kerb eating a soft-shell crab sandwich and garlic fries to muscle my way to a good view - you know how my version of tourism is to eat my way through something - but I did see the porn star mermaid float and the Mayor of Brooklyn float and the goth mermaids and the Uncle Sam and I won't even mention how wonderfully queer it all was. Travelling in a big group meant spending a lot of time trying to hook up with each other after someone would go to get a hot dog and go missing for an hour, until eventually Suz and I decided to hit the boardwalk and the beach. I didn't have my suit but I put my feet in the water and my feet on the sand - you know how that's 80% of the beach experience for an urbanite anyway - and some guy came by selling cheap Coronas and I basked in the company of some of the people whose invitations I had been turning down for a month in favour of moving. Then I took a sunned-out, head-lolling, open-mouthed nap home on the F train. There is a fab, fab, hot, sandy beach a subway ride away. Shit.
Temporary crash pad neighbour-hood was the site of the largest urban oil spill - six million gallons more oil than the Exxon Valdez. Now moving back to the Financial District, this time even closer to Ground Zero. Because I would rather breathe my environmental toxins than drink them. Well, if it's on the 2/3 and the 4/5!
"Yeah, I'm going to try to find work in New York once I finish my degree. All of my contacts are here and I just feel like, if you can make it here, you can, like, make it anywhere."
Went to a place called the Trailer Park (known for: tater tots) in Chelsea (known for: the gays), and had tater tots and Sofia Coppola champagne in a can. If any of you know where I can buy some cases of Sofia Coppola champagne in a can to keep in my fridge all the time that would be really helpful thank you.
Today I rode an elevator - wait, there's more - and as the doors were closing, I realized there were no lights on in it at all. And then I remembered how coworker had mentioned about an hour before that he'd gottten stuck in the elevator...
But I arrived safely and promptly. Still - pitch black box. That's something.
This is a picture of me riding the elevator to work in the morning.
The best part of the work day is quittin' time. Iced coffee and a cig in Union Square, before hopping on the train.
During that idyll today in I got this drive-by pick up line: "Saw you in a movie once. I used to have a crush on you."
Take my bookshelf. It's not alphabetized. But I know where each of my books is; I put them there. Sure, they're vaguely organized by theme, and the same author will be put together, but there's no top-down system. It just makes sense to me, and I look at it a lot, so I know where my stuff is.
Now, imagine I hired some temp, and handed her the book I'd been reading and asked her to put it "in its place" on the bookshelf. That temp, no matter how intelligent or well-educated or fantastic-looking, would quietly lose her mind. Especially if I said to her in a tart and passive aggressive way, first thing this morning, that she was making me a little bit crazy because I can't find things anymore.
Hold on, I'm summoning the strength to carry on... 
Here it comes!...
Ahhhh....
I don't know if I've mentioned this part yet, but I did spend $200 on a couch and futon and then $150 moving them (and my boxes) only to give the furniture away on Craigslist. Met the people outside the bug apartment today and watched them haul the futons off. I had no place to put them, of course, and just needed to be rid of them asap, so as to bear as little responsibility as possible for that place, get out sooner rather than later, justify not paying any of that rent. Also had pulled my stuff out of storage two already-paid weeks early. Which will be ironic if I end up living in the Financial Distict again - where they were stored - since that is where rents seem to be cheapest.
Sitting outside near the projects (which I did, for two hours, waiting for these furniture pirates to show up) is kind of nice. All the middle-aged Spanish women say hi because they don't know who you are yet. Cutest, though, was a four-year-old girl walking with her dad, who asked him "Do you like that girl, daddy?" To which he said, "No, I like your mama. I ain't allowed to like any other girls." "What's her name?" "I don't know her name! I don't want to know her name. You want mama to beat daddy up?"
Then got home to find a fly infestation in the crash pad. Infestation. Lord of the flies. Eventually, 100 of them dancing in the see-thru dustbuster, since, pace the honey/vinegar apothegm, apparently there is no better way to catch a fly. Had to unpack and repack each one of my boxes, terrified that a sticky little sac of maggots had crept in there during their four-day sojourn at the bug apartment.
It's been a great ride, folks.
P.S. NY real estate continues to kick my ass. You can't even live on top of three other people for less than $1000 a month. Not even in Brooklyn. You wouldn't believe the shitholes. You wouldn't believe the prices. The terms and conditions. The asshole brokers. "$1295 Studio in the East Village. [And by that we mean $1900 studio in the East 90s.] 28 square feet. Gut renovated. ***A REAL GEM!!! TONS OF SUNLIGHT*** through the sole window in the bathroom. Fee: 86%. Bring fourteen paystubs and proof of a diversified investment portfolio. ***WON'T LAST!!!***" The jackass roommates. "Show up between 3:55 and 4:00 pm on Friday for the open house. Vie with 50 others for a chance to live on our ugly furniture and share our idea of hygiene. Also, bring first, last, second last, and fifth months' rent. And a security deposit. 123 4th Street, just sixteen blocks off the L in East East East Williamsburg."
The other day in the Polish restaurant, I got a Polish menu instead of an English one (btw, you have to go to this place - two mediaeval knights' armour suits standing guard outside the door and $8.00 for plate with pierogies, kielbassa, cabbage rolls and potato pancakes, with beet salad, cabbage salad and two cold water pickles). And today in the grocery store a woman started trying to ask me about the price of garlic in Polish. Oh, and when I went to the bakery the woman tried to serve me in Polish.
I mean, sure I *am* Polish - in that Western Ukraine sort of way - but come on now. Am I that moon-faced? Am I that cankled?
P.S. If that seems evil, I just found their website for this pic, and the front page includes the line "I have always dreamt about opening a real polish restaurant, a restaurant that Polish people would not be ashamed of..."
The very Form of a job. The structural realities of working laid bare. Not working: having a job. I spend most of my time ruminating on what 13 years in the workforce has taught me and marvelling at my prowess. I know how to manipulate four articles of office-appropriate attire into a seemingly different outfit every day. I know how to stretch a small assignment into a 
two-hour preoccupation. I know how to make up an answer to my own question because the boss isn't around. I know how to find one more thing to do when I have completely run out of tasks. I know how to look busy when I am not. I know how to kill at least half an hour before looking at the clock again. I know how to entertain myself in my own head when there is no music, no conversation, and no challenge. It's the wage worker's algorithm: timetheft in direct proportion to underpay.
So I drove a car here. Didn't think I'd be doing that. Okay, it was in Brooklyn, not Manhattan, but still I took the BQE and everything. Didn't freak out at the pedestrians crowding the crosswalks, didn't mind the cabs usurping my lane, didn't even flinch at the oncoming traffic using my lane to avoid a left-turner, never failed to peel off the light, paid no mind to the constant masturbatory honking, kept my middle finger raised the entire time. That's hard to do in a standard.
Steven van Zandt - also known as "Little Steven" and "Silvio Dante" and "Townes van Zandt" - came in and bought flowers at the place where I always buy coffee. I'm pretty sure it was him. If it wasn't him, there are in fact two human beings out there driving a Lamborghini and wearing a really long do-rag.
